Of course Barack Obama’s latest treachery – normalizing relations with the Castro Brothers prison state – is a terrible thing. It is as fraudulent as Obama is and it will further crush any hopes the average Cuban might have of ever being free. By infusing cash to prop up a torture regime Obama has all but guaranteed the Cuban people’s nightmare will continue after the Castros have died. They need only look to Venezuela to see their own desolate future. Yet, as sad as this is for the Cuban people, it is fraught with dangers for us as well. The...

Published on American Thinkerby Enza Ferreri I'm not sure how conservative Americans will view the recently-published book Democracy as a Neocon Trick (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) by Alexander Boot. It’s a very unusual work, in that, whereas critics of America are generally on the Left end of the political spectrum and those on the Right tend to unquestionably defend the “land of the free”, this is a criticism of the US from a non-Leftist viewpoint, indeed from a traditional, conservative, Christian, pre-Enlightenment viewpoint. I don’t agree with everything the author says about America, but he’s such a brilliant philosopher...

Latest dispatch from the "dissent is patriotic" is dead front: Howard Dean has accused people who don't share his political views of being "authoritarian people who fundamentally don't believe in democracy." Poor Howard, who declared the times to be very "frightening and disconcerting," made his astounding accusation on today's Up With Steve Kornacki while attempting to explain the Republican sweep on the statehouse level. View the video here.

When the Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago this week, people in the Soviet Bloc gained something even more valuable than a right to vote: a free market. Democracy is definitely better than taking orders from Communist dictators. But real freedom means doing what you choose as an individual, not waiting for the rest of society to vote on whether you can. In politics, winners get to tell the losers what to do. In the marketplace, you buy what you want. I buy what I want. If some people want to buy movie tickets while others prefer to buy...

...In other words,the dysfunction of the Obama era—driven by the asymmetrical polarization of the GOP versus the Democratic Party—is likely to remain locked in place for the rest of the decade, perhaps longer.......This past year,frustration with congressional inaction on immigration—and public pressure from immigration activists—pushed the White House to float the possibility of taking unilateral action to create a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants. The result was a primal scream from conservatives,who accused the president of flouting the Constitution.....And while the Obama proposal fell within the president’s authority,it’s also true that Republicans weren’t completely wrong. There is a point...

The increasingly heated standoff in the central business district of this Asian financial hub cannot last indefinitely. Eventually, something will have to give because there is no middle ground between the opposing sides: The people want the vote, and Beijing says they can’t have it. Practically speaking, Beijing cannot make an exception for Hong Kong without stirring up democratic sentiment across the rest of the world’s largest country. Reports from the ground that the People’s Liberation Army has reinforced its Hong Kong garrison indicate the government has no plan to yield. The Hong Kong tinderbox is relevant to America because...

“Beijing is bulking up the military presence in Hong Kong,” a source on the ground told Radix News. “Under the cover of night, PLA troops are being sent over the border from the mainland. Why would they need an army in this peaceful place?” The short answer is that Chinese Communist Party officials view debate and protest as challenges to their authority, and the kneejerk authoritarian response to a challenge is to put it down. The threat of a harsher crackdown has been in the air since last month when security forces used tear gas and nightsticks to try to...

A bipartisan group of senators from across the political spectrum—from Elizabeth Warren and Patrick J. Leahy to Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio—wants President Barack Obama to speak out and act to support Hong Kong’s democracy movement.They don’t specify exactly what they want Obama to do—they say “demonstrable, meaningful steps”—but note that a 1992 law “authorizes you to suspend trade and economic provisions should Beijing not provide sufficient autonomy for Hong Kong.”Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is president pro tempore and Judiciary chairman, leads the letter with Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Rubio.“The people of Hong Kong have sent a strong...

HONG KONG (CNN) — Thousands of pro-democracy protesters jammed the streets of Hong Kong’s central business district Saturday night and early Sunday, clapping and cheering just hours after an ultimatum by government leaders: Let city workers back in their offices soon, or else.

The worldly and elite journalistic caste indulged in a little cultural chauvinism last night when many determined that the Ferguson protesters were the first group of human beings in history to put their hands up with their palms forward as a gesture of supplication. As massive demonstrations engulf Hong Kong, protests which have been ongoing for weeks since the Chinese government revealed its intention to vet candidates for elected office in the former British colony for the first time since unification in 1997, demonstrators began marching with their hands up in a display of submission to police. The similarities...

SMH. Stupidity magnified. Max Fisher, one of vox.com’s favorite fictionists, attributed the gesture of raising your hands (as in surrender or non-aggression) to Ferguson, no matter where in the world, no matter what reason. Hong Kong's protesters are using the same "hands up, don't shoot" gesture used in Ferguson.I’d be willing to guess that the majority of protesters in Hong Kong, who have a real reason to be upset with their Chinese masters, are like the 22-year-old Fisher quoted: One 22-year-old protester told Quartz's Lily Kuo that she had never heard of the events in Ferguson. He goes on to...

Hong Kong police used tear gas on pro-democracy protesters on Sunday, turning up the heat on an already boiling confrontation between Hong Kong citizenry seeking a greater say in their region's affairs and the Beijing-backed leadership of the island. But what is their face-off really about? What is the history of Hong Kong's place in China? Hong Kong is a "special administrative region" within China, having been returned to mainland sovereignty in 1997 by Britain. But having been a British colony since 1842, Hong Kong developed a decidedly more Western form of government and bureaucracy than the rest of China....

Instagram has reportedly been blocked in China following a weekend of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong. Photos shared on Weibo, a microblogging platform similar to Twitter, also seem to be hidden if they contain certain keywords. Searches for phrases like "Occupy Central" and "Hong Kong students" are blocked, says the BBC's Beijing bureau. Instagram told the BBC it was aware of the reports and was looking into the situation. "It's commonplace for China's internet censors to go into overdrive during politically sensitive events," said Celia Hatton, the BBC's correspondent in Beijing.

Hong Kong's mass protest is networked. Activists are relying on a free app that can send messages without any cellphone connection. On Sunday alone, the app was downloaded more than 100,000 times in Hong Kong, its developers said. FireChat relies on "mesh networking", a technique that allows data to zip directly from one phone to another via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.

The typhoons that lash Hong Kong make quick work of umbrellas, the squalls twisting them into Calder sculptures of disarranged fabric and metal. On the evening of Sept. 28, prime typhoon season in this South China Sea outpost, flocks of umbrellas unfurled on the streets of Hong Kong. This time, they guarded not against rain and wind but tear gas and pepper spray. One of the world’s safest and most orderly cities—a metropolis of 7.2 million people that experienced just 14 homicides in the first half of this year—erupted into a battleground, as gas-mask-clad riot police unleashed noxious chemicals on...

Occupy Central movement is aimed at challenging China's supreme power organ. People have been staging protests in Hong Kong seeking the "real universal suffrage." They attempt to force the central authorities to change the decision of China's top legislature. A decision made on Aug. 31 granted universal suffrage in the selection of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR)'s chief executive on the basis of nomination by a "select committee". The decision possesses unchallengeable legal status and authority. It is "a certain choice and the only choice" to safeguard the decision, in line with the "one country, two systems" policy...

“Hong Kong has picked up the baton and is leading the pro-democracy movement of China now,” said Rose Tang, who was among the student leaders in 1989. “Hong Kong is becoming the catalyst to kick-start the end of an era – the Chinese communist’s one-party dictatorship.” [....] What has been called the Umbrella Revolution could as well be dubbed the Protest of Politeness, amid a burgeoning of ideological optimism in a city normally defined by its conservative dedication to the making of fortunes.

After a day of tense protests in Hong Kong in which at least 34 people were injured, organizers called on tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in the Chinese territory to head home late Sunday. But as Sunday became early Monday, it appeared many of the protesters were set to continue to jam streets of the business district. The sometimes violent demonstrations follow a week of student-led boycotts and protests against what many see as the encroachment of China's political will on Hong Kong's governance. They were responding to China's decision to allow only Beijing-vetted candidates to stand in the...

The BBC's Juiliana Liu says the situation on the ground is "extremely chaotic" and that protestors show no sign of dispersing. Hong Kong police have used tear gas to disperse thousands of pro-democracy protestors near the government complex, after a week of escalating tensions. Dozens of demonstrators were arrested, with hundreds remaining in the city centre late on Sunday. Protestors want the Chinese government to scrap rules allowing it to vet Hong Kong's top leader in the 2017 poll......

Hong Kong police used tear gas on Sunday and warned of further measures as they tried to clear thousands of pro-democracy protesters gathered outside government headquarters in a challenge to Beijing over its decision to restrict democratic reforms for the city. After spending hours holding the protesters at bay, police lobbed canisters of tear gas into the crowd on Sunday evening. The searing fumes sent protesters fleeing down the road, but many came right back to continue their demonstration. Students and activists have been camped out on the streets outside the government complex all weekend. Students started the rally, but...

Hours after the police sought to break up the protest, large crowds of demonstrators remained nearby, sometimes confronting lines of officers and chanting for them to lay down their truncheons and shields. Police officers were also injured in skirmishes with protesters. Streets of a city known as a safe enclave for commerce became a nighttime battleground.

Hong Kong democracy protesters camped out in the centre of the global financial hub on Monday (September 29), continuing a stand-off that represents one of the biggest political challenges for Beijing since the Tiananmen Square crackdown 25 years ago. The unrest, the worst in Hong Kong since China resumed its rule over the former British colony in 1997, sent white clouds of gas wafting among some of the world's most valuable office towers and shopping malls before riot police suddenly withdrew around lunchtime on Monday, after three nights of confrontation. As riot police withdrew, weary protesters slept beside roads or...

Thousands of pro-democracy protesters are taking to the streets of Hong Kong ahead of a national holiday on Wednesday, and they're using a messaging app to keep in touch and defy censorship. FireChat is a messaging app built by the San Francisco-based company Open Garden, which creates products facilitating a more open, decentralized internet. What makes the app fascinating is that it doesn't require the internet for local chat, instead allowing people to connect via Bluetooth. When you first download FireChat, the app doesn't let on that it has become a hub for pro-democracy protesters around the world. Instead, the...

San Francisco politicians, eager to showcase their democratic credentials in their liberty-loving city, traditionally have not shied from taking stances on human rights, checking in on everything from apartheid in South Africa to Burma’s military junta. But on Wednesday, as tens of thousands of peaceful democracy demonstrators who had already been tear-gassed marched in Hong Kong, Mayor Ed Lee was on his City Hall balcony hoisting the flag of the target of those protests — the autocratic government of China.

THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE Keeper of the Flame of the Enlightenment HONG KONG STUDENT PROTESTS The differences between student-led movements in this country and in Hong Kong are striking. One need look no further than their respective demands and the ideas that animate their protests. When American college students are moved enough to organize, they are almost always calling for more “freebies,” not more freedom, as the courageous students today in Hong Kong are doing. The students in Hong Kong are speaking truth to serious power, with all too real consequences for questioning and challenging their ruthless masters in Beijing. When...

The differences between student-led movements in this country and in Hong Kong are striking. One need look no further than their respective demands and the ideas that animate their protests. When American kids are moved enough to organize, they are almost always protesting for more "freebies," not more freedom, as the courageous students today in Hong Kong are doing. The students in Hong Kong are speaking truth to real power, with all too real consequences for questioning and challenging their ruthless communist masters. When the Hong Kong protests have subsided, those lucky enough to avoid imprisonment will face a bleak future. With their...

Americans are caught up with the Ebola crisis and the Secret Service lapses in protecting the White House and the president's family. But what is transpiring in Hong Kong may be of far greater consequence. Last weekend, Hong Kong authorities used pepper spray and tear gas to scatter the remnants of a student protest of the decision to give Beijing veto power over candidates in future elections. The gassing was a blunder. Citizens poured into the streets in solidarity with the protesters. Hong Kong police lacked the nerve or numbers to remove them. The People's Liberation Army stayed in its...

Hong Kong protesters stockpile supplies, fear fresh police advance By Donny Kwok and Yimou Lee HONG KONG Tue Sep 30, 2014 7:26am EDT (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters extended a blockade of Hong Kong streets on Tuesday, stockpiling supplies and erecting makeshift barricades ahead of what some fear may be a push by police to clear the roads before Chinese National Day. Riot police shot pepper spray and tear gas at protesters at the weekend, but by Tuesday evening they had almost completely withdrawn from the downtown Admiralty district except for an area around the government headquarters....

The Hong Kong government said Monday that riot police have pulled back from pro-democracy demonstrations around the city. Explaining the move, the government said in a statement that the protesters on the streets are "calm again." It urged the protesters to disperse to allow emergency vehicles, public transport and other traffic to pass.

Hong Kong police have fired repeated volleys of tear gas to disperse pro-democracy protests and baton-charged the crowd blocking a key road in the government district after official warnings against illegal demonstrations. Student groups are spearheading a civil disobedience campaign along with democracy activists to pressure Beijing into granting full democracy to Hong Kong. The city's central district descended into chaos on Sunday as chanting protesters converged on police barricades surrounding their colleagues, who had earlier launched a "new era" of civil disobedience. Riot police staged repeated pepper spray and baton charges and threw tear gas at the crowds. Police...

The American people have had enough with the assault on their first amendment rights. They just want to be left alone by their government and government-affiliated pressure groups. It is the establishment in both parties, who is on the take from these pressure groups, that prevent ordinary Americans from speaking their minds like the civilized people we ARE. People disagree, sometimes vehemently. That’s normal and healthy, and it shouldn’t be the job of the government to shut people up. That’s not American – that’s totalitarian. How do we fix this? It’s remarkably simple. We, the normal people, outnumber the control...

What if you were allowed to vote only because it didn't make a difference? What if no matter how you voted the elites always got their way? What if the concept of one person/one vote was just a fiction created by the government to induce your compliance? What if democracy as it has come to exist in America today is dangerous to personal freedom? What if our so-called democracy erodes the people's understanding of natural rights and the reasons for government and instead turns political campaigns into beauty contests? What if American democracy allows the government to do anything...

With the rise of Islamist organizations, repressive regimes, and civil conflicts which threaten regional stability, the promise of the Arab Spring of 2011 quickly devolved into an Arab winter. In an expansive article in The Economist, the threat to the Middle East is discussed in appropriately grave terms; Syria and Iraq are in flames while Jordan looms as the next domino to potentially fall. Libya and Yemen, where Islamic terror networks operate with impunity, are labeled “failed states.” Those Middle Eastern nations that are not in danger of imminent collapse are either absolute monarchies or counties which merely maintain...

The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America, by F.H. Buckley, Encounter Books, 2014, 319 pages, $27.99.Try making sense out of what Americans tell pollsters. According to the Pew Research Center, fewer than one in five of us trusts the federal government. Gallup says that nearly three quarters of us consider it "the biggest threat to the country in the future." Yet by equally overwhelming margins, Gallup shows Americans agreeing that "the United States has a unique character because of its history and Constitution that sets it apart from other nations as the greatest in the...

July 1 marks 17 years since the former British colony became a Chinese Special Administrative Region. Calls for popular representation are growing ever fiercer in the freewheeling metropolisWhen typhoons begin to lash along Asia’s coastlines each midsummer, Hong Kong usually manages to escape serious damage, since storms in the South China Sea tend to lose their muster over the Philippines and Taiwan by the time they make landfall. Some locals will cheekily boast that the city, constructed across an archipelago and on a peninsula extending south of the Chinese mainland, is protected by an invisible dome that blocks out these...

For the past few centuries, the Western world has witnessed a contest of historic visions. On the one side was the dream of the beautiful collective. Human progress was a one-way march toward socialism. People would liberate themselves from religion, hierarchy and oppression. They would build a new kind of society where equality would be the rule, where rational planning would replace cruel competition. On the other side was . . .

Is the election of a pro-business, pro-American, growth-oriented prime minister in the world's largest democracy good news or bad news for the world's oldest democracy? We in that oldest democracy are currently governed by the Democrats, a party that has more in common with the defeated Congress party in India than with the victorious Bharatiya Janata Party. You could tell that the White House was less than overjoyed at the election of Narendra Modi when the spokesman recited boilerplate praise of a "free and fair election." Are there sensitivities regarding this particular small-government guy? Sure. India is not Indiana. The...

Until We Learn to Be Sovereign, the Illegitimate State Will Continue.A recent editorial column here at the PanAm Post spoke of the failures of the opposition parties in Venezuela and their culpability in the collapse of their country. The article raises some very important questions about democracy itself. Democracy, after all, is a very good system, and can produce some very positive results. However, it is also a system fraught with incredible danger. Democracy represents the will of the people, but it also represents their whims, their fears, and their prejudices. The Historical Legacy: False Promises, Division, Failure It was...

We're better than those damned Russians and their Putin; we have democracy! Well, maybe not. Quote: Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. Lots of big words in that paragraph. Let's distill it down -- the argument presented is that America is really no different than...

The startling thing about the books academics typically dismiss as relics of the past is the uncanny manner in which they anticipate the present. “Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1848. “Democracy attaches all possible value to each man while socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number.” “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” The de Tocqueville quote was resurrected nearly a century later by Friedrich A. Hayek in The...

The National Popular Vote effort, which could see the 14 states with the largest populations decide the presidency, is more than halfway to its goal of legally bypassing the Electoral College established in the Constitution. Now 10 jurisdictions possessing 136 electoral votes are part of the plan, just over half of the 270 electoral votes needed to bring the National Popular Vote interstate compact into effect. The NVP effort is fully partnered with a George Soros-funded election group, as WND was first to report. The group, the Center for Voting and Democracy, received original seed money in 1997 from the...

How did our relations with Russia go so far wrong so quickly? The Obama administration hoped to have a “reset” of our bilateral ties by wiping the slate clean. In giving the Russians a reset, we were showing a willingness to let bygones be bygones. Or, in their case, let Putin’s 2008 invasion of neighboring Republic of Georgia be forgotten. It was exactly the wrong thing to do. But the trouble with our Russian relations goes further back. After the collapse of Communism and the largely peaceful dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991, it seemed...

n most states, elected officials, usually state legislators, are responsible for assessing what education funding in the state should be and will be. Recently, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that in fact, the judicial branch has jurisdiction over this crucial area of the budget. Although the Court didn’t answer the broad question of what constitutes the “adequate school funding” requirement in the Kansas State Constitution, it did say that lawmakers must fund schools equally. And while this ruling will have some impact on present school funding formulas, the Court made sure to clarify that it has jurisdiction over what counts...

The human race is on the brink of momentous and dire change. It is a change that potentially smashes our institutions and warps our society beyond recognition. It is also a change to which almost no one is paying attention. I’m talking about the coming obsolescence of the gun-wielding human infantryman as a weapon of war. Or to put it another way: the end of the Age of the Gun. ........................................................... The human race is on the brink of momentous and dire change. It is a change that potentially smashes our institutions and warps our society beyond recognition. It is...